


Bound

by furchte_die_schildkrote



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Kylo Ren/Rey, accidental force bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6630577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furchte_die_schildkrote/pseuds/furchte_die_schildkrote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Rey and Kylo Ren stood at the edge of that snowy cliff, their minds were inexorably tied together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Irusu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irusu/gifts).



> Happy Star Wars Day, Irusu!

Rey stood at the edge of the cliff as Kylo Ren and his scorching lightsaber bared down upon her. She reached her mind out, with purposeful precision and desperate accuracy. She pushed into Kylo Ren's mind with a force and violence that was absent during her first entrance into his thoughts. Surrender, she ordered. Falter, she prayed. But Rey could not force him to budge. She pushed harder, deeper, and as she did, she felt him enter her own mind. The thought filled her with rage.

The earth ripped open behind her. The darkness churned around her with a chaotic, vibrating energy. And she knew how to use it. She drew a last jolt of energy from the raging destruction coursing through the shattering planet.

Rey sprung forward, pushing Kylo Ren back.

She felt every blow he made as if she herself had swung the lightsaber. Overhead from the right. Strike once. Twice. Spin to the left. Every step he made—heavy, unsubtle, and informed by technique that grew scattered and sloppy in anger—was as familiar as her own. She landed a blow. Left arm. He still fought back—like a wounded animal, determined to die fighting.

Rey easily knocked him to his back, burning a rough slash across his face in the process. He lay on his back, panting.

She felt the dark power in her surging. Her rage fueled it. It fueled her rage. She could not tell which was true. All she knew was that her lightsaber would look truly satisfying impaled in Kylo Ren's heart.

Yet she stayed her hand for just a moment. Looking down at him, some unbidden knowledge warned her that she could not kill him. She had known his steps and his strikes as he planned them. While she did not feel his injuries as she delivered them, she felt a phantom pain beginning to slice into her, mirroring his wounds. She felt a burning rage towards him, but she knew it was not just her own. There was a foreign anger in her as well, looking down at the weak, pathetic, failure that lay before her. She knew, just as she now knew how to swing a lightsaber, that she would feel his death as well. While she did not know exactly what that would mean for her, she was unsure whether she was willing to find out.

The earth decided for her, as it cracked open between them.

 

* * *

 

The next time they clashed, Kylo Ren had Rey cornered on his scout ship, which she had latched onto and entered through a truly impressive gambit. In spite of that skill, she was in what appeared to be an inescapable situation. She had climbed towards a jammed escape hatch and was now stuck on a ladder that led nowhere. He glared up at her, light saber held at the ready. Hateful determination burned across her face, but he knew the fear it was masking. Rey knew he could feel every bit of her. Her heart pounding in her chest. Her legs quivering. Her mind desperately searching for escape through her well-cultivated survival instinct.

She braced herself as Kylo Ren raised his hand to Force her to the floor. Sure enough, she felt the familiar blunt power surround her. The air around her turned to lead. Her body froze—the bones and meat and frame locked in place. Her heart raced, and she could feel everything dynamic in her rage against its prison. Her blood, her breath, the Force— _The Force_ , she realized. It whirled and churned against her bonds, more concentrated and furious than she had ever felt it before, like a storm tearing away at a lonely outcropping, like a child's toy gaining speed and power as it spun around a stick.

Rey focused her energy on the whirling Force within her. As Kylo Ren stalked towards her, she prepared herself. She reasoned that a well aimed strike with the this trapped power would serve as well as a blaster shot. She just needed to harness it. Direct it. She nudged and prodded at it, and felt a jolt of shock and something close to pain run through her with each touch. Interestingly, she noticed that Kylo Ren staggered at the jolt. He dropped her, and she fell to the floor. Rey felt his prideful triumph give way to wild sort of anger that encouraged sloppiness.

Rey scrambled to her feet, reaching for her lightsaber, but was frozen again in mid-draw.

This time, Rey did not waste second. She concentrated all of her mental strength and rammed it against the storm of Force inside her. She and Kylo Ren let out a simultaneous scream as a fiery and electric energy tore through them both. They fell to the floor, panting. The ship lurched. The circuits sparked and the lights flickered and the engine creaked and groaned.

With an exhausted wave of Kylo Ren's hand, Rey felt the last shreds of consciousness pulled out of her.

 

* * *

 

Rey woke up in a familiar position, sitting with her hands cuffed behind her, locked around a metal bar on bunk. She figured Kylo Ren's one-person scout ship must not be equipped with a dedicated interrogation chair.

Kylo Ren loomed in front of her, fully masked and cloaked. His physical presence was imposing. Almost inhuman. He always seemed to stand larger than life in his costume, and Rey was acutely aware of his size as she sat cuffed to his bed. She was also aware that he cast a much larger shadow than he could fill. Fear and vulnerability and confusion flowed out of him, even as he masked them with rage. The way he paled in comparison to the mask he conjured was pathetic, and Rey could not tell if that was her own thought or his.

He drew out his lightsaber, holding it a finger's width from the side of Rey's throat as she leaned as far away as she could. Rey could heat the heat radiating from the beam. It's pulsing buzz echoed in her ears. Her heart raced as he angled it across her neck, a slip away from killing her.

“What did you do?” he asked through his mask's voice modulator.

“Judging by the sound of the engine, I would say I broke your ship.”

Kylo Ren jerked his lightsaber up, inches away from her chin, forcing Rey to angle her head upwards to avoid the blade.

“You know that is not what I mean.”

Rey responded with a silent glare. His panicked rage seemed to grow rabid in a way she did not understand. “I really don't.”

Rey felt the rage take on a murderous intent like she had never felt before. She felt him prepare to push his blade forward through her throat, finally killing her.

“It did not have to be like this.”

But the strike never came. He wanted to slice through her. He wanted her to pay the price of refusing all he had to offer her. Rey could feel every bit of him wanting her dead, but he did not strike. He did not know why, but he could not kill her, and that infuriated him.

He reset his stance, but still nothing. Anger pulsed through him, informing every move he made. Finally, he raised his lightsaber and sliced it down. Rey flinched as it struck down on the bunk next to her—once, twice against the bunk—once against the ship wall, making sparks jump from the wires he singed through.

“You can't do it, can you?” Rey said, a realization growing in her mind.

Kylo Ren dropped the lightsaber. He roughly unfastened and yanked off his mask, flinging it against the control panel on the wall.

He glared at Rey with an acidic resentment.

“What did you do?” he asked again, painful desperation lacing his voice.

Rey answered by working her way into his mind. Kylo Ren resisted at first, but the storm of despair and confusion and his ever-present rage weakened his mental defenses. She let her memories–or rather, one particular memory—seep into his thoughts. Their battle in the snow. Her inexplicable knowledge of his every thought. Her inability to kill him. Her disgust oozed through his mind and melded with his own growing panic and fury.

“Don't be afraid,” Rey said, her voice laced with a bitterness. “I feel it too.”

Without a word, he turned and stormed away towards the shaft where Rey's ship had docked against his. Rey was left cuffed to the bunk, surrounded by sparking and gently smoking circuits. Rey heard the airlock hiss open and then, thankfully, slam shut. The engine of her ship hummed, and the clang of the metal docking locks coming undone echoed through Kylo Ren's scout ship. The sound of the ship boosters came to life, with a roar that slowly faded away as Kylo Ren flew off.

Immediately, Rey turned her attention to undoing her cuffs, which only took a minute now that she could devote her attention to the task. She smashed the five trackers on the ship, listening to the whispers of the Force to find them. Next, she calmly climbed down to the engine room to survey the damage. The wires were thoroughly fried, but nothing she could not repair.

She worked the wires with careful precision and technical artistry. Quiet, comfortable, and impeccably skillful. Eventually, the engine's death rattles turned to a healthy and robust hum.

Once Rey had set the ship on a course for the nearest Resistance base, she sat down on the bunk she had been cuffed to just hours earlier. Curious to test the limits of the strange connection the had forged itself between her and Kylo Ren, she closer her eyes, took a focused breathe, and let her mind probe outwards. She felt nothing beyond her own mind and the constant, quiet buzz of the Force that echoed throughout the vacuum of space.

She turned her mind to the vestigial energy surrounding the bunk. She studied the unique twists and textures and vibrations it gave off. The footprints of a monster. She fell into a strange meditation. Flashes of memories filled her closed eyes—a shriveled monster, life flashing out of countless eyes, a thrill of power as an approaching blaster ray froze mid-shot. She could smell him in the sheets, feel the shape of his body subtly indented into the mattress. Fear and anger and self-loathing raced through her mind.

Suddenly, she felt something inside her mind stir. Something foreign, yet increasingly familiar. Kylo Ren. In spite of herself, she gasped as the intruding presence shifted and recoiled. It flickered and vanished, leaving Rey achingly alone. 

 


End file.
